


where is your sting

by bereft_of_frogs



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Canon Compliant, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, Extremely Dubious Consent, Gen, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Loki is not having a good time, M/M, Paranoia, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sakaar (Marvel), Sexual Assault, Suicidal Thoughts, Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:34:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24115846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: “Hello, brother,” Thor’s voice says. Loki opens his eyes. His breath catches in his throat. Thor stands above him, gazing down at him. The Grandmaster doesn’t notice a thing. As Loki looks closer, he realizes he can see through Thor. His brother’s form is not quite opaque; Loki can see the garish curtains through his head.“Oh,” he says quietly. “You’re not really here, are you?”“No,” Thor says clearly. “I’m not.”“Shit.”Loki is knocked from the bifrost by Hela and falls to a glittering, maddening cage.Or: what happened on Sakaar.
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Loki (Marvel), En Dwi Gast | Grandmaster/Loki, Loki & Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 237
Collections: Darkfics for a Stormy Day, author's personal favorites (bereft_of_frogs)





	1. how far is the fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not particularly difficult to lose your mind on Sakaar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Notes on Warnings: while most of the sexual encounters in this fic are on the 'extremely dubious consent' side, the first time is very much explicitly sexual assault and happens pretty fast, about halfway through the first chapter (just after Loki goes to look out the window). The work also contains/discusses: drug and alcohol use, auditory/visual hallucinations, suicidal thoughts (second chapter contains more explicit discussion of suicide), vomiting, references to past torture, and violence. 
> 
> Please also note the 'unreliable narrator' tag. Additionally, keep in mind that opinions expressed by characters (including - especially - the POV character) do not reflect those of the author. 
> 
> Enjoy is perhaps the wrong word, but...for lack of a better term, enjoy! :-)

_“Bring us back!”_

_“Loki!”_

He falls.

For the second time that day, the third time in a decade - which just seems _profoundly_ unfair - Loki falls through darkness, screaming until the wind tears the voice from his throat.

_Maybe this fall will take me for good,_ he thinks. _Maybe this will be the end,_ he hopes.

It doesn’t. It’s not. He lands. Hard.

Loki lays stunned for a moment, but when the initial shock fades he gets to his hands and knees. Nothing is broken, the fall was not as harmful as the first. Even the panic quickly recedes, leaving behind a sense of frustration, almost annoyance. He huffs. This was _not_ how he had foreseen this day going, but that had always been a failing of his. He was a terrible seer and seemed to have a knack lately for being caught by surprise by the _worst_ circumstances. At least that made him good at adapting to them. At spinning a new plan at every turn. Even now, he starts planning anew, he starts plotting when he’s going to do once Thor emerges from the portal behind him.

“Damn,” he curses under his breath. Loki rocks back on his heels, feeling the heat bite at his skin. He casts a glance around at this planet he has found himself. He doesn’t recognize it. Honestly, it looks like little more than a dump, piles of trash towering like hills around him. There are portals in the sky, raining down more trash. He is really at the ass-end of the universe this time.

Loki sighs. He’s already scripting the tirade he is going to launch at Thor when he arrives. A small voice inside him whispers, _but were you not the one to call the bifrost_ \- no. This is Thor’s fault, surely. Thor will blame him of course in turn, and they’ll likely finish what they started on the cliffside. Loki supposes several of these towering trash heaps will be destroyed by the day’s end.

_But at least you will not be alone this time - a familiar face, even one that hates you, is so vastly preferable to being utterly alone in the darkness, isn’t it?_

Loki ignores the voice in his head and keep his eyes on the portal. He waits for Thor to crash down. He waits to make fun of his brother for what is sure to be an undignified entrance on this lovely planet. _You oaf, can’t even keep your feet, no, of course I didn’t come barreling down like a beast-_

Thor does not appear.

Loki huffs. Thor always keeps him waiting. Thor is _late_ , would he not just _appear_ already, so they can start their fight in time to get it over with by nightfall, and move on to the more pressing matters of finding shelter and figuring out what to do next. Loki is impatient. Annoyed.

The seconds pass. Minutes, and there is no sign of Thor. As time ticks by, it becomes more and more clear that Thor should have appeared by now. The frustrated scowl drops off his face, leaving a hungry, anxious expression.

Thor was seconds behind him in the bifrost. He should have appeared mere seconds behind Loki.

Loki watches the sky, growing more and more apprehensive, but unwilling to admit the truth.

“Come on,” he whispers to himself. “Come on.”

Time passes. Trash falls from other portals, flotsam and jetsam of the universe, crashing down. Not what he is waiting for.

Thor does not appear.

Loki can all too clearly picture what happened following his fall from the bifrost. The images pass before his mind’s eye before he can stop them, all the possibilities of what Hela has done flooding into his mind.

“No,” he says with gritted teeth. _“No!”_

There is only one explanation.

Thor is dead. Hela has killed him. As soon as Loki allows himself to think it, he is certain that it is truth.

The first emotion he feels is anger. Bitter angry, fury at Thor for daring to not follow him, for daring to _die_ , to leave him alone again. “Damn you, Thor, _damn_ you,” he roars. Asgard is lost, Thor is lost, and Loki is _furious_.

He screams and pounds at the dirt, nearly blind with rage. The grief tears itself out of his throat in the form of a howl that echoes across the piles of trash.

When his rage is spent, Loki keeps his head bowed low, catching his breath and trying to figure out what to do. He is utterly lost, utterly alone, _again_ , and that worked out so _well_ the last time.

At least he is uninjured this time, whole and still hale. His magic is strong and his knives are sharp. He will not be taken again.

So when the sound of footsteps comes from behind him, Loki slips knives from his sleeves and readies himself.

“You! On your feet.”

Loki stands, not hurried, and turns. There’s a small grouping of cloaked and armed creatures. One carries a net. Loki feels a flash of anger, twisted up with a fuzzy memory of lying broken on a barren planet while the Chitauri gazed down at him. A trickle of sweat rolls down the back of his neck. He takes breath. Adjusts his stance ever so slightly, ready to strike. “And who might you be?”

“Fighter or food?”

Loki narrows his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“Are you fighter? Or are you food?”

“Well,” Loki says. “I suppose you’ll just have to find out.”

He kills them all, in a haze of grief and fury. He disables their guns with magic and cuts their throats, tears out their hearts, uses the darkest magic he knows to obliterate them.

The scavengers all lie dead in a ring around him and Loki doesn’t feel any better. He is drenched in sweat, this planet far too hot for his liking. And he stinks now, splattered with the creatures’ foul blood. Covered in dust and mud that they’d kicked up in the fight. He banishes his knives.

“That was impressive,” the woman who had been watching for the better part of the fight finally says.

Loki had noticed her, despite the fog of fury, several minutes into the slaughter. But she sat quietly and drank from a large glass jug and didn’t make any moves to intervene, so he had let her be.

“Would you mind terribly,” Loki turns towards the woman, putting on a more polite expression. “Telling me where we are?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You fell from one of the portals then?”

“I did indeed.”

“We’re on Sakaar.” When Loki makes no sign of recognition she continues. “The contest of champions? The Grandmaster’s domain? The realm of the lost? Trash dumpster fire in the pits of the universe?”

“Sounds pleasant. I’m just _assuming_ there is no way off this stinking place.”

She grins. “Nope.”

“Fine. And aren’t you going to ask me if I am food or a fighter?”

“No, you’re certainly not food. You’re obviously some kind of fighter but…I don’t know. There’s something different about you. You’ll have to see the Grandmaster to find out.”

“The Grandmaster. He’s the leader of this place?”

“He is.”

“Well. Fine. Where do I find him?”

She hesitates, looking at him strangely, like she’s not used to people going so willingly. Loki files that away.

Loki understood right away that he would have to meet this Grandmaster eventually. The vast majority of this planet seems to be nothing more than a dump. The city, and the tower that rises above it, is the best place to find shelter and food, and get the lay of the land. Getting it over with seems preferable. He remembers on Sanctuary, how he had spent weeks - months, perhaps, the passage of time was always difficult to tell on Sanctuary - cowering in anticipation of the Titan, whom all prisoners and most of the guards feared. No, he will not live with that dread this time.

“I was going to bring you anyways,” the woman says.

“You’re saying I don’t have a choice?”

“You dispatched those scavengers well, but you won’t get through Scrappers that easily. Especially not me.” She sounds like she means it. And she looks like she’d be able to follow through on the threat. Loki has a brief, foolish urge to test it, purely because she’d made the boast. But that will either end in him wrapped in chains, dragged unwillingly - _bones broken as he is cast at the base of a throne_ \- or having to trek his own way across the stinking, hot garbage fields.

Loki nods. “I don’t doubt it. Shall we, then?”

“You got it.” The Scrapper caps her bottle and starts towards the ramp to her ship. Loki starts after her. Something catches the corner of his eye.

There’s a familiar form shimmering across the stinking puddle, in the haze of the heat. _Thor?_ But the mirage vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

“Come on,” the Scrapper says. She looks a little unnerved by the whole thing, by his quiet submission after so brutally slaughtering the scavengers. “I won’t hesitate to wrap you right back up in the scavengers’ nets if I need to.”

Loki turns from the trash pits and voluntarily walks into her ship. He doesn’t say a word the whole way to the tower. She occasionally shoots him disturbed glances, but respects his silence.

“Alright, well,” she says when they arrive. “Time to meet the Grandmaster.”

_

The Grandmaster’s tower is blissfully cool in comparison to the stifling heat of the trash pits. The air pumped from the vents is even pleasantly scented. Everything is scrubbed clean. It’s a vast improvement.

When they cross the threshold, the Scrapper grabs his arm.

“Hey.” He tries to pull away. “I have come willingly, have I not?” He snaps.

She rolls her eyes. “Trust me. You don’t want to look too willing. Just go along with it.”

Loki forces himself to submit to her grip, to allow her to half drag him towards a pair of guards and a tall door, the hallway beyond too dark to make out any details. The Scrapper’s grip is iron hard on his arm.

“Got another one, 142? Alright. In there,” the guard directs him into a dark door. The Scrapper gives him a small shove towards the entrance and a last strange look before she turns to the right and walks away. Loki watches her go, then glances at the guard with his long baton. Then he turns towards the doorway.

Loki walks without hesitation into the dark hallway. There is fear in his heart, but he doesn’t let it affect his stride or his expression as he pushes forward.

_The only way out is forward. There’s nothing left behind_. Just a burning Asgard, and a dead family. No, there’s no looking back this time.

There’s a moving walkway beneath his feet. Loki startles a little, scrambling to keep his balance as it starts up, pulling him through the tunnel. A recording of a calm, soothing voice starts to play, as do images projected on the wall of the tunnel.

“Fear not,” The recording chimes. “For you are found. You are home, and there is no going back...” Images dance across the walls as the recording goes on about Sakaar, about the Contest, and how fortunate he is to meet the Grandmaster. A fascinating introduction, but Loki turns away from it as the walkway drags him through the dark tunnel. His heart skips a beat and he takes a deep breath, readying himself for whatever comes-

The bright light blinds him for a moment as he stumbles from the tunnel. He throws up an arm to block the light, until his eyes adjust.

When he blinks them open and lowers his arm, there is a garishly dressed man seated on a lounge in front of wide window looking out on the planet’s trash. The Scrapper who had brought him in stands to one side, on his other is a broad shouldered woman holding a staff identical to the ones the guards carried.

“Interesting, very…” The man - whom Loki supposes is the Grandmaster - grins, looking him up and down with appreciation in his gaze. “Interesting. What’s your name?”

“Loki,” he responds, before he can think better of it and provide a false name.

“Where are you from?”

A more complicated question. He hesitates before opening his mouth to spin some misdirection, but he doesn’t have to. The Grandmaster interrupts him. “It’s hard to say sometimes, isn’t it? But it doesn’t matter any more, if you’ve chosen to come to Sakaar well…” He grins, stretching the makeup on his cheeks. “You’re from Sakaar now.”

Loki blinks. “The place of the lost and found?”

“Exactly! Precisely, you’re already getting it. You’re never lost on Sakaar. But yes, come closer, let me get a better look at you.” Loki steps forward, still working to get a read on everything. There are many people in the room, most paying this exchange no mind. They’re casually drinking, chatting with each other as the Grandmaster makes this assessment. “Bit bloody.”

“Had a bit of a run-in with the scavengers.”

The Grandmaster tuts. “Those disgusting things should know better.”

“They don’t seem to be beings of tremendous intelligence,” Loki says with a hopefully charming smile. “But I do apologize if I have offended.”

The Grandmaster laughs. “No offense taken, the scavengers are…necessary workers, but replaceable. We don’t worry too much about things like them.”

Loki tries imbue his body language with interest, engagement but his mind is far from connected to his body. He knows it looks wrong, stiff and unnatural but the Grandmaster doesn’t seem to notice. In fact, he seems to be falling for it. There is a gleam in his eye as he responds, leaning back in his seat and uncrossing his legs. He rises and turns in a circle around Loki, assessing. Loki forces himself to stand stock still, subjecting to the assessment without protest. When the Grandmaster completes his circle, he stands very, very close to Loki’s face.

“You _could_ be a contender, from what I heard from 142 here,” he says thoughtfully. He takes Loki’s chin in his hand, turns his face this way and that. “On the other hand, you’re too _interesting_ for that.”

“I certainly hope to be…of interest.” Terrible. Sloppy. Loki would cringe at his own performance, but it’s understandable. He’s off his game, after so long in the relative safety of Asgard and the sudden shock of being torn from it.

The Grandmaster, somehow, falls for it. Or wants something more than he cares about Loki’s actual charms.

“I think I’ll like having you around.” The Grandmaster taps his chin. Then he turns to the Scrapper. “How much you want for him?”

“Six million,” the Scrapper says quickly.

“Done. Transfer the credits.”

She hadn’t mentioned that. Loki supposes he should have known. It’s all painted over with a more pleasant coat, but it had been clear from the start what he was. It feels like an absurd betrayal though, that she’d brought him here knowing she’d get paid for it.

The exchange done, the Scrapper spares him a last glance and sweeps out a side door.

“Just a finder’s fee,” the Grandmaster explains. “Don’t worry your pretty little head on it. Now come. Sit. Let’s get to know each other a little bit.” He pats the side of the lounge chair and Loki sits, trying not to get too much blood on the cushions. “So you’re from nowhere, but where were you before you fell to our little oasis?”

“Oh, you know,” Loki leans closer. “ _Around_. The universe is a wide place after all. But this morning, honestly, I was at a play." That is at least true. "Things went…poorly and I found myself here.”

The Grandmaster laughs and leans closer. “Got any family?”

“No, no family.”

“Estranged?”

“Dead.” The word sticks in his throat. All dead now. Every last one. It makes him want to scream. But he senses that randomly screaming _might_ be a bad move.

“Ah, so you’re an orphan?”

Loki blinks, feeling suddenly faint. “Yes. An orphan.” It had really been the first time he had heard it put into such clear terms. An orphan. Not just on his own, but truly _alone_ in the universe. He thinks of Thor, wonders if he’s found his way to Valhalla yet. He wonders if Odin will be angry to see his son appear so quickly after himself, or if he will recognize his own culpability for Thor’s death. Then he shoves all thought of them from his mind.

“Oh, how sad. Isn’t that sad, Topaz?”

“Tragic. Just like the hundred other orphans this week.”

“Oh, hey now, Topaz. Be nice to our new guest. He came to Sakaar because he’s a lost thing, and we’re kind to lost things.” The Grandmaster sits up, moving closer. “I’m sure you don’t want to dwell on such sad things, especially before the party tonight.”

“The party?”

“Of course, you’ll find we have the most, uh, _fabulous_ parties here on Sakaar. I’ve got some visitors tonight and of course, I’d love you to attend. Get acquainted with everyone.” He snaps. “Hey, show our new guest to the suite on the third floor, that one should be clean.” The Grandmaster turns back to Loki, smiling lecherously. “Get cleaned up. You need to be ready to make a good first impression on our little society here.”

“I’m looking forward to it.” Loki forces himself to smile, to drop his gaze shyly.

Things could be worse. They could be far worse.

He’s going to take this as a blessing. This was a cage, to be sure, even if it was a gilded one. But of all the places he could fall, here at least he might have a chance of flipping it all to his advantage. There will be time to spin plans, to weave his plots. But first, he must observe. Must play the part of the lost thing caught up in the seductive charm of Sakaar, just for a little while.

“Good,” the Grandmaster purrs. His hand drops to his thigh, squeezes once and then slides a bit higher.

Loki knows one thing. He’s going to put a knife through this man’s heart one day.

_Unless you’re in over your head,_ a voice whispers in his ear, as clear as day. He can even feel the breath brush past his earlobe. Loki turns his head sharply, but no one is behind him. It had sounded just like-

“Hey,” The Grandmaster squeezes his thigh. “Everything all right there, dear?”

Loki turns away from the empty air. “Yes.” He forces himself to smile. “Fine.”

There are guards posted at most doors, Loki notes. He is not escorted by guards though, but servants, thin women dressed in long, flowing gold dresses. He could easily overpower them. The Grandmaster must be rather certain of his obedience, or certain of just how trapped he is on this planet.

Rather than making him feel more at least, it sends his heart thundering with anxiety. He manages to keep his cold demeanor though, as they show him to a posh apartment.

“Someone will collect you for the party tonight,” One of the servants says, opening the door wide for him. “The Grandmaster will send clothes to replace your…” She wrinkles her nose and looks him up and down. “Soiled ones.”

The clothes he’d been wearing when he fell to Sakaar are utterly ruined, covered in drying blood, and mud, and fluids from the trash piles that he’s trying not to think too hard about. He bows his head in thanks and they leave him alone.

Loki stands for a moment in the center of his suite, trying to wrap his mind around how he had been so swept up into the currents of this place.

He had been ruling Asgard that morning. Surrounded by familiar things, doing what he had done most days since he began ruling under the guise of Odin. And now he was here. Cast asunder again, with no way back. Everything around him foreign and strange. It is all so absurd, he wants to laugh, to give in to hysterics and laugh.

So he does. Doubles over and laughs and laughs until there are tears on his face and his stomach aches. When the spell has passed, he straightens up, a few more chuckles shaking lose.

He feels feels a prickling on the back of his neck, like he is being watched. Loki casts a glance around the room, but still he is alone.

He takes a few minutes to examine the suite more carefully, wondering if the feeling of being watched came from security cameras. Loki wouldn’t put it past the Grandmaster to have some sort of surveillance in these ‘guest rooms’ but he cannot find any evidence of it. They are well hidden, if they’re there at all and the feeling of being watched is not simply a byproduct of his paranoia.

The servant girls return and leave him fresh clothes, dark blue and shimmering with silver thread woven through the fabric.

Loki bathes, washing off the blood and filth from the trash pits, scrubbing his skin until it burns. Surprisingly, the supplied clothes fit rather well. A little tight, but Loki supposes that is likely intentional. He wonders how the Grandmaster managed to guess his measurements.

He starts to fix his hair, when suddenly he feels he’s being watched again.

_You’re always being watched, you must learn to use that to your advantage, my son._ Those were Odin’s words, spoken untold years ago. One of many lessons imparted on the art of courtly politics.

“If only you could see how I’m planning to use those lessons now, Father,” Loki whispers, mocking, to his own reflection. “If you could see how low I would stoop.”

He closes his eyes and sees golden sparks, floating up to the sky. Odin and his lies, as always. At least some of the things he taught his children might be proven useful to their survival, rather than just getting them killed-

He his the porcelain of the sink hard, the shock of pain shooting up his forearm. He gathers up his anger and sets it aside, hides it in a ball of hate burning in his chest. He has to finish getting ready.

When he raises his head, there is a shadow in the mirror. An indistinct figure, standing in the doorway. Loki jolts. He hadn’t felt anyone enter, concerning in itself if his guard is that off, that could be fatal, if he misses-

He spins to confront the intruder, readying his magic - but there is no one there.

“Hello?” Loki calls. He leaves the bathroom, but there is no one in the living room either. He sends out his magic, but finds nothing. “Well.” He stands at the center of the room and tries to think of a rational explanation.

_Chasing shadows, again?_ Sure sign of madness. It was to be expected in times like this. His heart is beating fast, thready and he works to calm himself. Strange, that he is so startled by nothing. Foolish.

Loki can’t help but feel that his mind is trying to warn him about something, but as the minutes pass in the empty and silent room, he becomes less and less sure it is not just his mind playing tricks on him.

A single guard comes to escort him to the party. Neither of them say anything on the way through the tower’s halls and does not enter, just holds the door open for Loki.

The party is what one would expect from a place like Sakaar. Loki can feel eyes on his back, whispers trailing behind him as he circuits the room. It’s dark, the light warm and low, and the music is smooth, loud but not pounding, but there’s a sense things will change as the night wears on. The seating is all wide, soft cushions and chaises, and there are bottles and bottles of drink on offer.

Loki barely feels up to making conversation. For some reason he cannot get the thought of the shadows that startled him out of his head. He makes some polite but cold conversation, but then his true object arrives.

“Ah, you’ve made it,” the Grandmaster sidles over, wraps an arm possessively around his shoulders. “I’m glad you came.”

There had not seemed to be any room to refuse. Loki smiles. “Of course.”

“Let me show you around, introduce you. Have you met-” The Grandmaster steers him around the room introducing him to various other courtiers. Some offer polite greetings in return, others stare at him with open jealousy as soon as they believe he is not looking. This crowd is going to be hard to play.

The Grandmaster had slipped a bright pink cocktail into his hand as soon as they began their tour, and makes sure it is refilled twice before they find themselves back where they started.

He snaps his fingers. “Now, you go on an enjoy yourself. I have some business, guests to see to, etc, etc. Have fun. I’ll be back to check on you later. But first. A gift.” A servant appears at the Grandmaster’s elbow, bearing a bottle full of clear liquid. “You’ll like this. It’s rare and expensive.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t _possibly-_ ”

“Pssht! It’s just a little something, to show how much we appreciate you coming here, joining our little community here on Sakaar.”

Loki thinks of the amount of money that had changed hands when he arrived. He thinks of the way the Scrapper had said, _either way you’re coming with me._ He smiles. “Of course, I appreciate it.”

The Grandmaster returns the smile. “I know you do.” He gives him the whole bottle. It’s cold in Loki’s hands. “Now, this stuff really is the good stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised if you wanted to drink the whole thing tonight. It’s really best that way.”

Loki had planned on staying mostly sober. Drinking is dangerous. Drinking might lead to him spilling secrets best left hidden, or losing track of important details he should be cataloguing. But the Grandmaster’s words, combined with the look in his eye, seems a clear instruction.

And besides. Now that he’s had a few drinks already, it’s so easy to seek the oblivion of getting well and truly drunk. Maybe that will chase away the lingering nerves stemming from the odd shadows in his rooms. Maybe it will chase away the reality of where he is, _what_ he is, and the absurdity of how far he has fallen.

Maybe it will chase away the sinking hole in his stomach that had been dragging on his bones since he looked up at the stormy sky, waiting for something that would never come again.

Loki uncaps the bottle and takes a long drink. The liquid is almost too sweet, sparkling on his tongue. The Grandmaster laughs and claps him on the back. “Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Then he drifts away, leaving Loki with the bottle.

Grief, he names the lingering hole once he has drank a quarter of the bottle down. It’s grief and it makes him want to rage, but he must keep his cool for now.

_What right do you even have to grieve?_ True, he had tried to kill Thor himself a few times. But they had never quite seemed _real_. They’d been like bad dreams, intrusive impulses that he never really meant once they’d passed. Who does Hela think she is? She storms from a sea of blackness, free from her prison and the first thing she does is-

“That bitch,” he says to himself.

“Sorry?” The woman sitting beside him gives him an odd look.

“No, apologies. I was thinking of someone else.”

“I’m assuming an ex of some sort.”

Loki laughs. “Not quite.”

The woman leans against the back of the chair. “Ex or no, she the reason you ended up here?”

“She is indeed.” Loki takes another drink from the bottle.

“We all have those people, you know,” she says. “You started fantasizing about revenge yet?”

The image of Mjolnir shattering flashes before his eyes. The way her power had smothered him. The pure fear that sent him scrambling for safety. “No.”

“You will.”

“Somehow I don’t think I will.” He _should_. Should go and give Thor the vengeance he deserves. But Hela is too powerful. He will be nothing before her. Only for death, or to become a thrall once again, to yet another master.

“Hm. Fine.” She glances down at the bottle. “The Grandmaster’s taken a liking to you.” She says that with only a bit of envy in her voice. There’s something else. Pity, perhaps.

On Sakaar it is equally perilous to be within and without of the Grandmaster’s inner circle. Everyone here is clambering for a space close to him, and terrified of it at the same time. Loki doesn’t know where that leaves him, that he has seemed to capture the Grandmaster’s attention so effortlessly.

Instead of saying anything else, he takes another drink.

The drink is strong. He’s not sure how strong until his head is spinning, his knees weak and he stumbles when he tries to stand. The strength of the alcohol had been disguised by its sweetness. He takes another moment to get his feet under him and manages to get himself together enough to drift over to the windows, to look out on the city.

There seems to be just as much of a party down there as there was in the tower. He can feel the beat of the bass on the glass, contrasting with the music in the tower. There are lights, and banners down there, and green lanterns casting light on the packed, gyrating streets. He watches for a while, and listens to the chatter of the party from behind him.

The Grandmaster wears a very particular cologne. Loki had noticed it right away. It was distinctive enough to set him apart from any other. He smells it in the air, a second before the hand closes on his arm and yanks him hard away from the window.

Loki’s reflexes are slowed by the drink. He follows limply. The Grandmaster presses him back into an alcove, a corner that’s not quite entirely out of view.

The Grandmaster is a little more disheveled than last Loki saw him. There’s a wild glint in his eye. His grin is like a wolf bearing his teeth.

Loki opens his mouth to ask him if he’s been having fun but before he can speak, the Grandmaster kisses him hard. Their teeth knock painfully against each other, the Grandmaster’s tongue slips inside.

It’s all far too much, too fast, and Loki tries to pull away but there’s nowhere for him to go, pressed back against the wall as he is. He can do not much else but hold on as the Grandmaster kisses him, as his hands roam over his body.

The drink has stolen things from him. Stolen strength, stolen coordination. When he feels himself getting lightheaded from the lack of oxygen, he pushes at the Grandmaster’s chest but it does nothing.

The Grandmaster finally breaks for air. He pulls the bottle from Loki’s fingers and sets it aside, before he starts to kiss down his neck. Loki’s heart jumps, mind filled with the absurd thought of the wolf with his teeth too close to his throat. Then the Grandmaster’s hands are on his waist, firm and too hot, then they’re at the front of his pants, deft fingers sliding buttons from their moorings.

The Grandmaster’s playful laugh is a low rumble in Loki’s ear. It’s a conspiratorial laugh, like they’re lovers stealing precious moments away during a party. Loki knows that they’re not, that this is all happening far too fast, far too out of his control. He had ceded the moment he saw the look in the Grandmaster’s eye when they first met that they would sleep together, but he had not intended it like this. He had intended it to be controlled, for it to be part of his plot. Not when he was dizzy with drink, barely able to keep his feet and certainly not able to control _anything_. He scrambles to try and regain control, to get back onto the script he had written for himself.

“Wait-” he gasps, but the Grandmaster doesn’t pay him any mind. Just runs his hands down Loki’s back to pull down his pants to mid-thigh, keeping his legs tightly pressed together. “St-” The Grandmaster nips a little at his neck in warning and Loki stops himself just before he gets the word fully out.

The Grandmaster holds him still against the wall, pressing one forearm firm against his chest while he frees his erection with the other. He guides it into the tight space made by the press of Loki’s thighs.

_This isn’t happening_ , Loki’s numbed brain unhelpfully supplies. It all feels like something far away, like moving images happening to someone else. The Grandmaster moans and the room spins before Loki’s eyes. He feels as though he’s going to vomit. He has to shut his eyes and pray that he doesn’t.

It is over fast. The Grandmaster spills with a soft grunt and then a long moan, rocking back and forth a few last times. The liquid splatters over the wall behind. Loki feels it drip down the backs of his thighs. The Grandmaster keeps them held like this, his cock between Loki’s legs as he wraps a hand around the back of his neck and tips his face up to kiss him sweetly. Before Loki can full process what has happened, the Grandmaster pulls away, leaving him cold. Without another word, he fixes his clothes, gives Loki a last peck on the cheek and saunters away.

Loki’s heart pounds. His knees are shaking. The skin between his thighs is rubbed raw. He manages to get himself together, though he has nothing to clean the fluids from his legs.

On still weak legs, he stumbles towards a couch, to sit and try to understand what had happened. He hadn’t figured the Grandmaster to seize him so quickly. He thought he’d be toyed with for longer, that he’d be able to hold out for longer, be able to play the game to keep the Grandmaster intrigued enough to keep him around. He thought that’s what the Grandmaster would want, a more tantalizing game. A grave miscalculation. He’s too drunk, he’s too shocked to recalculate.

The clear bottle has found its way back to him. Though he still feels miserably nauseous, though the room is still spinning, he pops it open and takes another drink. He’d started the evening seeking the relief of altered perception, now he wants _oblivion_. He wanted the darkness to take him, to wipe clean his mind of anything, _everything_ , so he didn’t have to think at all anymore.

The party has devolved into debauchery around him. No one is even halfway sober. At least four couples are having sex in the open, without concern for the stares. In a dark corner, one individual is hurriedly masturbating, groaning plainly as their hand moves furiously in a fast, rhythmic pattern-

Loki barks a laugh. He had been ruling a planet, not yet a full day ago. He had been a prince, he had been a powerful sorcerer, he had had parents, who were dead. He had had a brother, who hated him and was also dead. He had been cocky and power hungry and so, _so_ lonely and now he was laying, drunk out of his mind, in a room full of people fucking each other, waiting for the madman who had just assaulted him to return so he could further worm his way into his good graces, in the hopes that he’d be hidden and safe enough on this planet full of trash that his secret sister wouldn’t come after him, or _worse_ , maybe if he burrowed himself deeply enough into this planet’s sordid underbelly Thanos would forget his promise to deliver unto him a fate worse than death, worse than the tortures he’d already suffered-

Loki laughs again, flooded with the pure hysteria that had gripped him in his rooms earlier. He laughs at how far he’d fallen in the last few hours. Both literally, as he tumbled again from the bifrost into the Void, and figuratively. The king to the whore. A fall of meteoric proportions. The alcohol starts to soak further into his bloodstream. There are spots in his vision. He no longer knows which way is up.

Loki laughs at the absurdity of it all and takes another drink.

His last clear memory is nothing but a flash. The Grandmaster returning, still with the hungry look in his eye, taking him by the hand and leading him away.

The rest is nothing but darkness.

Somehow he makes it back to his bed. He sleeps, mostly too weighed down by alcohol to dream, but as it slowly leaves his system, the dreams start.

He dreams of Thor. He dreams of Thor when they were children, chasing after him around corner after corner of the palace, never quite catching up. He dreams of Thor screaming at him. Loki looks down at himself and sees he is covered in blood.

Then he dreams of Thor on a barren rock suspended in space. The stars stare coldly down upon them. A shadow moves across the plain, coming up behind Thor. Loki opens his mouth to cry a warning but nothing comes out. Thor shatters into a million shards of glass. The reverberations echo across the rock face. The shadow turns its gaze on Loki.

He wakes, with tears streaking down his face, to vomit over the side of the bed. It takes a long time to empty his stomach of liquid but when he’s done he collapses, and passes back out, this time to the dreamless sleep of the dead drunk.

When Loki wakes up again to the bright light of morning with the worst hangover of his life, he can hardly remember most of the night. He just remembers the vague shape of two things: 1) He'd had sex. 2. He'd cried.

Not the best start.

_

Sakaar is a great deal of waiting. The Grandmaster doesn’t show himself for a few days after that first party and rumors float around that he is having a spectacular orgy aboard a specially designed ship. Loki hears that and feels his mind skip over something in his memory. A gap, something he doesn’t want to examine too closely. There have been a lot of those since his fall into the Void. Now he has more to add to the collection. He puts that first party from his mind and tries to move forward.

The Grandmaster’s absence doesn’t mean there’s nothing for Loki to do. On the contrary. The parties continue even without him, though things take a bit of an edgier turn. When the Grandmaster is there, all attention is focused on currying favor with him. It’s at these smaller evenings that the real political game takes place. The fighting and the backstabbing, and the sowing of alliances.

Loki does well.

He’s always been a good politician. He’s always been good at chaos. Oh, he does very, _very_ well. It takes work, but this part is almost enjoyable. He lies and he fucks and pretends to drink while staying sober enough to play the game.

By the time the Grandmaster has reemerged, Loki has gotten three concubines demoted to servant status, started six fights, and made sure he has a standing invitation to every party and the next round of the Contest.

He feels like he’s surrounded by wolves, snapping at his heels. If he falters, even a little, they will tear him apart, ripping into their flesh with their long teeth. But he stays smiling, aloof, watching from his high tower as the chaos he wrought works it’s own special magic.

Of course, it also makes him wary. Paranoid, some might say. Sometimes when he is alone in his rooms, he feels eyes on the back of his neck, staring. Shadows seem to flicker, but when he looks at them square on there is nothing there. He tears apart his apartments searching for hidden cameras or places someone could be hiding to spy on him, and finds nothing.

It’s easier in public, when he at least _knows_ everyone is watching him. There, they stare openly, some with jealousy, others looking for cracks to exploit. He even enjoys it a little, being the object of such scrutiny. He holds his head high and turns his nose up at all of them and delights at the whispers the follow him.

The Grandmaster finally slinks down from his orgy ship during a casual afternoon gathering.

Every eye is on Loki, sipping at a ice blue cocktail while the Grandmaster saunters towards him. He sits beside Loki, so close their thighs are pressed together. The smell of perfume and oil is thick in the air. The Grandmaster grins at him and Loki’s mind skitters over the memory of that first party. He forces his expression to remain cool and intriguing while his heart sinks into his stomach.

“I heard,” the Grandmaster says. “You’ve been very busy.”

“Well you left me all alone. And there were just…so many _fun_ things to do.”

The Grandmaster laughs. He puts one hand on Loki’s thigh, squeezing possessively. The other he places on his lower back, sliding it lower, over the curve of his ass.

Loki is mostly sober when he goes to the Grandmaster’s bed this time. He makes sure of it, using just a touch of magic to cut some of the alcohol and drugs. He makes sure it’s a choice this time.

_

This is all infinitely better than the forgotten pit of the cosmos he found himself the last time he fell through the Void. The fact that he dreams of Sanctuary and its torments nearly every night means _nothing_. That sometimes the faces of his tortures and the faces of the other courtiers on Sakaar blend together, that he wakes screaming and tearing at his skin in revulsion means _nothing_.

Sometimes the Grandmaster is there to comfort him while he wakes and he must force himself to stop screaming though he wants to keep going until his throat is torn raw.

And sometimes, but only when he is alone, he dreams of Thor. And wakes with tears on his face and a yawning pit in his chest.

_

The Grandmaster announces a tournament. It’s not against his champion, who Loki has yet to see but has heard quite a bit about. Just a few smaller fights, early rounds of the contest.

“Should be fun,” he says as he extends the invitation. The command. “A bit bloody. Hopefully you’ve got a strong stomach.” He runs the time of his finger in a line from his sternum to his belly to punctuate the point.

“Oh, I do,” Loki says with a smile back. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

The crowds really seem to enjoy these brutal displays. The Grandmaster maintains his private box for his most loyal inner circle, where he also hosts and commentates. The guests here are kept blissfully cool by the air conditioner and kept well fed and well plied with alcohol. Loki looks down at the teeming masses in the stands. The air shimmers with waves of heat and there is already a haze of smoke and kicked up dust in their air from the early skirmishes. For all the exhausting scheming and the distasteful things that happen in this tower under the cover of darkness, Loki is profoundly glad he is up here rather than down there.

He turns from the window and starts to go find a seat when he’s stopped by a voice.

“Hey. It’s you.” The Scrapper who had brought him in. She’s leaning against the bar, already drunk. He can see where the ‘finder’s fee’ for his capture went. “How’re you finding Sakaar?”

Loki sits on the stool next to her. “A truly fascinating place.”

She snorts into her drink. “It’s a real shithole. But I guess it’s home. Got nowhere else anyways.”

Too true. “You didn’t tell me,” he says instead of agreeing.

She furrows her brow at him. “Didn’t tell you what?”

“The ‘finder’s fee’.”

“Oh. Right. Well.” She flashes him a grin. “Girl’s got to make a living. You seemed willing enough to come along, why shouldn’t I make a little money off it?”

“It’s not a finder’s fee.”

The smile drops off her face. “Of course it isn’t. What do you want me to say? Either way, you weren’t leaving Sakaar, friend. Sorry I took advantage. It’s what you have to do to survive here. You’d best learn that fast.”

She leans over the bar and grabs two bottles.

“Is everyone on this planet a raging alcoholic?”

“You tell me. You’ve certainly imbibed enough since you’ve been here.” She cracks open one of the bottles and takes a long swig, tucking the other under her arm.

“It is a rather nice planet, that the slaves are allowed such indulgences.”

“Careful. He doesn’t like words like that.”

“Of _course_ he doesn’t. I’m sure you don’t either.”

She caps the bottle. “You’re right. I don’t.” Her voice is laden with bitterness. Loki’s clearly pushed a button, but unlike the others here, he doesn’t care. He rather wants to piss her off. He doesn’t know why. This Scrapper was clearly in favor with the Grandmaster, he shouldn’t be antagonizing her. But he really, really can’t bring himself to care. Something about her rubs him the wrong way. Maybe it was the cool way she had sold him to the Grandmaster.

Maybe there’s an angry part of him that wants to test her threats against him. He looks at the muscles of her arm, thinks about her grip on his arm, and feels a strange regret that he hadn’t fought against her. That she hadn’t beat him into the Earth and dragged him to the tower entangled in nets like she’d threatened.

_Perhaps then you wouldn’t feel so pathetic_ , a quiet voice in his head he’s learning to ignore says. _Because then you wouldn’t have waltzed straight into your own cage?_

_It was the only choice I had_ , he reminds himself. _Where else would I have gone?_

“Quit staring,” the Scrapper snaps at him. She turns her back and starts towards the exit.

“You’re not staying for the fights?”

“I watch them from up there.” She gestures with the bottle. “I just come here to pinch the Grandmaster’s supply. I don’t waste a minute with these disgusting creatures.”

“Thanks ever so much,” Loki says in return. To her blank look, he elaborates, “I am one of those disgusting creatures now, aren’t I?”

“Huh.” She cracks a half-smile. Gives him an appraising look. “Right. Yeah, I guess you are,” she says like she doesn’t quite believe it.

Why, if he feels such bitterness towards her, does it make him feel so much better that she holds him apart from the crowd?

The fights are, in fact, _boring_.

The Grandmaster had warned him that he should have a strong stomach, but the first few fights are little more than skirmishes resulting in a few broken bones and opponents pounding each other into the dust. There’s a lot of preening for the crowd as well. Loki’s almost disappointed. This is just so much tamer than he was expecting.

Finally, there’s one fight that does get rather nasty, with one fighter armed with a long, spiked whip that he uses to liberate his opponent from life only slowly. Blood seeps into the sand and the crowd goes wild at every crack of the whip and agonized cry.

“Having fun?” The Grandmaster slides over to him during a break between fights, while they drag the corpse from the pit and refresh the sand.

“Dreadfully bloody,” he says. “But I’m sure nothing in comparison to your champion. I’ve heard such…wonderful things.”

The Grandmaster lights up. “Oh yes, he’s absolutely brutal. You know, Scrapper-142 found him for me, came flying in on a jet one day, the crowd absolutely _loves him_ , they’re huge fans…”

Loki finds his mind wandering to long ago while the Grandmaster talks. There had been a particularly bloody battle once. On Vanaheim, he believes. He doesn’t remember all the details of who had raises this particular army, of how their numbers got so large, why Asgard was finally called in to stop it…but he does vividly remember the stench of blood in the air, the way it had covered his knives and splattered on his face, the way his magic sang as it ripped through their enemies. Most clear of all, he remembers at the end, when Thor turned to him, smiling so wide in the bright sunlight, equally soaked in blood, and they had celebrated together in the face of their hard-won victory.

“You know, I’m curious to see how you would have done in the arena.”

“Hm?” Loki slams his attention back to the Grandmaster.

“Don’t get me wrong, love, I’m _really_ glad I kept you around. But I know what you did to those Scavengers, I just wonder what you’re like as a fighter. I’m sure you would have done _marvelously_.”

“But then I’d be…just constantly covered in blood,” he says a little breathlessly. Struggling to find a way to distract the Grandmaster from this line of thought before it landed him in the disgusting fighter’s pits. “I’m sure that wouldn’t have been-”

“You’re right, that’s true. And you’d ruin your clothes.” The Grandmaster fingers the edge of his shirt, brushing his fingers against skin.

The next fight starts and pulls the Grandmaster’s attention away. The threat has seemingly passed. Loki watches as the fighters size themselves up across the arena,

“Loki.” The voice is so clear, it seems for a moment to come from a memory.

He turns. There stands Thor, as he had seen him at the last. There is a brief flash of bitter hope in his heart before someone steps through his brother, a servant with a tray, and Thor’s image vanishes.

He turns back to the fight, heart pounding and a bitter taste in his mouth. The Grandmaster notices.

“You look spooked, darling,” he says.

Loki tries to smile. “I apologize, I thought I saw someone I knew. I was mistaken.”

“Doesn’t sound like it’s someone you want to see.”

He wants to see Thor more than anything. He dreads seeing Thor more than anything. “Not particularly,” he says in a way that’s hopefully suggestive enough to get the Grandmaster to drop the conversation.

It works. “Allow me to take your mind off of things, hm?” The Grandmaster plucks a long-stemmed glass from a passing tray and presses it on Loki, keeps his hand on it to make sure he raises it to his lips. Loki can see the oily sheen on the surface, knows it’s more than plain alcohol. The Grandmaster’s insistent, keeping the glass there until the liquid is drained.

Whatever drug is in the liquid is fast acting, but not unpleasant. His head is spinning a moment later, the apparition entirely put from his mind, replaced by a delightful buzzing. All concerns entirely put from his mind. The Grandmaster sets the glass aside and grabs at his hips possessively.

Loki lets himself be caught up in the wave. These are the easiest of moments. He just has to let go, let whatever the Grandmaster will do to him happen. For the duration of the drug in his system, he just has to lay back and take whatever comes. He lets his mind float away on the breeze and allows the Grandmaster to take control.

The fights are still going on, in the background. Most others are watching them, not sparing them any glances. The Grandmaster presses him back against the cushions on a lounge chair as the sound of the violence from the arena and the cheers of the crowd and kisses him deeply. His hands wander and Loki lets his head fall back on the pillow. His eyes flutter shut.

“Hello, brother,” Thor’s voice says. Loki opens his eyes. His breath catches in his throat. Thor stands above him, gazing down at him. The Grandmaster doesn’t notice a thing. As Loki looks closer, he realizes he can see through Thor. His brother’s form is not quite opaque; Loki can see the garish curtains through his head.

“Oh,” he says quietly. “You’re not really here, are you?”

“No,” Thor says clearly. “I’m not.”

“Shit.” Loki shuts his eyes again as the Grandmaster’s hand slips below the waistband of his trousers. When he opens them again, Thor is still there.

Through the rest of the event, Thor’s ghost does not leave. He stays standing above the lounge, glowering down. No one else notices his presence. Loki’s cheeks burn with embarrassment as the Grandmaster kisses him in the quiet corner of the party but he doesn’t dare stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm only showing up like two years late with Starbucks this time, instead of my usual five! So this is my take on the question of what happened to Loki on Sakaar when he fell there after being tossed from the bifrost by Hela. He is _not_ having a good time of it. 
> 
> I'd been working on this one for a while, got kind of stuck until I got the idea to make it sort of a grief/mourning duology with my pre-AoU fic, [spare me over](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20138905). Accordingly, I pulled the title from a _different_ song called ['Oh Death'](https://open.spotify.com/track/04HiDO4gVvCHqmkaappeHH), this time by Noah Gundersen. (I mean, okay yes technically it is also from 1 Corinthians, but I was thinking of the song when I came up with the title.) 
> 
> Second chapter coming on Friday! So, Thor's ghost has appeared. Do you think he's going to be pleased about the situation Loki's gotten himself into? (Is he even actually a ghost?) 
> 
> Find me on tumblr [@bereft-of-frogs](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/). Comments/Kudos/Shares/Frogs always appreciated! See you Friday for Chapter 2!


	2. the ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor's ghost just _won't_ leave him alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional notes on warnings: this chapter contains more explicit discussion of suicidal thoughts than the first, plus a canon-typical execution (that's played a little more seriously).

Thor’s ghost does not vanish. He stands, invisible to everyone else, and watches as Loki and the Grandmaster make out on a sofa.

Loki had gotten almost used to the Grandmaster’s proclivities for semi-public intimacy, but now that Thor’s ghost is watching, he’s back to being self-conscious and awkward, unsure of where to put his hands, unsure of what do do with his body. His mind keeps turning to Thor, keeps turning to how he got here, what he could he _possibly_ be doing here, as a _ghost_ no less, what in the Nine Realms was Loki going to _do_ -

The shock of Thor’s appearance has cleared a good deal of his high, unfortunately. He could stand to be just a bit more intoxicated to deal with all of this.

The Grandmaster loses interest in him as the fights pick back up. He releases Loki with a quick peck to the cheek to go commentate at the window, leaving him to fix his clothing and grab another drink from a passing tray. He keeps Thor in the corner of his eye, trying to ignore him and act as though nothing’s wrong as the evening goes on.

Once the fights are over and the Grandmaster has had his fill of entertaining, Loki escapes the party and storms to his rooms. He can sense Thor following him. He stubbornly ignores the spirit as he moves quickly through the halls, keeping his spine very, very straight.

If one claimed to see their dead older brother, killed at their surprise older sister’s hand, it would be natural think they’d gone mad. But Loki was raised by witches. He knows magic and specters and yes, even if his mind has not been entirely whole in the last few years, he can certainly tell the difference between _haunting_ and _hallucination_.

Now, the question is _why_ Thor is haunting him and not ascending to the afterlife as a proper spirit would.

When Loki is back in his rooms, he slams the door on the ghost. Thor reappears in the living room, already perched on the sofa, watching him with a maddening grin. Of course that wouldn’t have worked. But for a moment, it made Loki feel better. It made him feel a flash of bitter satisfaction just like it used to when he was a petulant teenager slamming the door on his older brother’s nose. All of the rose-tinted memories he’d been dredging up in the depths of his grief dissipate, and leave behind bitter annoyance at the specter haunting him. Just like when he was still a child, on the cusp of adulthood, and Thor would go off on adventures Loki was still deemed to young to participate in. Loki would mope and miss his brother for weeks, and the moment they were reunited he’d go right back to bickering and snapping at him.

_“What?”_ Loki snaps now. The ghost on the sofa remains silent. “What do you _want_ , Thor?”

“To check on you, is that not enough? I thought you were dead for two years, brother, I wanted to see you.”

“See, and now _you_ are dead, my brother.” He’s still a little bit drunk. There is still a sweet coating on his tongue. “And now you are haunting me. Unappreciated, I assure you.”

_But aren’t you glad you aren’t alone anymore? Wouldn’t you take a shade over that awful loneliness?_ Thor’s mocking blue eyes ask him.

“I’m surprised at you, Loki,” he says out loud.

“At the depths to which I have sunk?” Loki flops on the other chair, draping himself on it.

“I am surprised you have let yourself be swept up in the vices of this place so quickly. It has barely been days, brother, since I died and already-”

“-and already I am whoring myself out for my survival?” The plain way Thor said it. _I died_. It hurts, so Loki strikes back with his words. “Let me tell you, _Thor_ , the universe is not all sunshine and honeyed wine, there are dark places that _you_ have never dwelled, so I do not expect you to understand what I have to do to survive.” He waits for Thor to yell about shame. About how he’s ruining the family name, disgracing them all. _Though, I guess you’ve already done that, he thinks with a giddy laugh. When your scheming finally caught up to you. When you slipped to Thanos and gave him your loyalty. Or maybe just when you were born. Maybe it was all cursed from the start._

“You are letting yourself be taken advantage of,” Thor says. “You are letting him destroy you.”

Loki barks a laugh. “That’s true.”

“You are going to let him eat your soul.”

“Oh, Thor. I don’t have one. I am a hollow shell that Sakaar will fill up. That’s what they all say. That seems to be the purpose of this place, to take what is broken and empty and fill in the cracks.”

“That is what the Grandmaster says. Because he wants legions of people he has power over. He wants you only so he can toy with you, then he will cast you away when he has had his fun. When he has drunk his fill.”

“Not if I stick a knife in his back first,” Loki says holding up a long finger to stop Thor. “I just need to win his trust, a little more. Establish my place here. And then I’ll kill him, to take his place.”

“To take his place, or to take revenge on him for raping you?”

Loki sits up abruptly, a flash of rage. He hadn’t even thought that so directly himself, but the sense of it had been there, in the back of his mind. His desire for vengeance, justice had remained a secret, hidden away, though it surged each time he thought of that first party, whenever the memory of being pinned against the wall floated to the top of his well of bad memories. He doesn’t know how Thor so quickly pried it from him. Maybe in becoming a ghost he had come into some new telepathic powers. Or maybe he just knows Loki that well, so well it makes Loki feel flayed open.

Thor just watches patiently. Perhaps it is the late hour, the alcohol, or the gnawing grief, but Loki cannot maintain the anger for long. He sinks back into the cushions of the armchair, resting his head back. Shoves away what Thor said, and its many implications.

“I will kill him, and take his place. I think I can do fairly well here, don’t you, Thor?”

“And what of Asgard?”

“Asgard is already lost, if Hela reigns.”

“Do you think if you stay here, she will not come after you? You think you will be safe here?”

“If I can secure my position, if I can conquer this stinking heap, _yes_. Yes, I can at least gain…gain…” There’s a headache starting behind his eyes. He feels dizzy. He should probably drink some water, but can’t find strength in his legs to stand. “A vantage point. A place of safety. If I can…trick her, if I can win this battle, I can…betray-” He’s not longer quite sure of the details of his plan. It blurs with another, one that had ultimately failed. _Well, try, try again._ He pinches the bridge of his nose, breathing hard. When he drops his hand back down, it is shaking.

“What trickery do you speak of? What betrayal?” Thor doesn’t sound accusing. He sounds like he’s trying to pry something loose, gentle away secrets that Loki for years has clutched in the darkness.

“Oh no,” Loki says with a tired, sad laugh. “I told you nothing while you were alive, you will get nothing now that you’re dead.”

“You are not making any sense, brother.”

“I’m drunk.” Loki sniffs. He blinks a few times. Thor is blurring before him.

“You are. That’s not going to help your scheming, you know. If you are constantly letting him pour spirits and drugs down your throat until you’re senseless.”

“What did she do to you?” Loki interrupts. His throat is clogged. His eyes sting. “After I fell. After she cast me from the bifrost. What did she do?” Thor stares at him for a minute, looking more ghost-like by the second. His skin fades to a translucent white, shadows appearing under his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks. Loki’s next breath hitches. “How did she kill you?”

Thor rises smoothly, drifting over to him. He looms over Loki, resting his hands on Loki’s forearms where they drape over the arms of the chair. His touch is like a cold whisper. If Loki concentrates hard enough, he can really feel his hands pressing onto his bones.

“Do you really want to know?” Thor asks. “Do you really want to picture how she broke my body? How she pierced it with her blades? Crushed and shattered me like she did Mjolnir?”

“No,” Loki whispers back.

Thor smiles. It’s his challenge smile. The one that says, _I dare you_. The one that says, _come, Loki, I bet you can’t…I bet you wouldn’t. You don’t have it in you._ It looks feral now, wild. Frightening. It takes Loki’s breath away.

He shuts his eyes against it and when he looks back, Thor is gone, to wherever he goes in between haunting Loki. Perhaps he haunts Jane. Perhaps Hela.

All Loki knows is he is again alone and it’s crushing.

_

In the morning, when Loki wakes hungover, there is a handwritten invitation to a ‘little lunch thing’ in the Grandmaster’s words waiting on his bedside. Loki’s not sure what to expect from this ‘little lunch thing’ but he expects it is not going to be as innocent as the wording makes it seem. But certainly he is going to find out.

When he is dressed and setting out to leave, he feels a whisper of air on the back of his neck. His hand stills on the doorknob.

“You’re not going to get me to change my mind,” he says to the air. “I’m going to work my way into the Grandmaster’s good graces and secure my position. By any means necessary.”

_I didn’t say anything._ The air seems to say back. _Do as you will, brother._

“You don’t get to judge me, oh dead one,” Loki says back.

_I offered no judgment._ But Loki can hear the scorn in Thor’s disembodied voice. On second thought, the emotion he hears in Thor's voice is in fact _concern._ That, he finds, is so much worse. He grits his teeth and yanks the door open, storming all the way to the Grandmaster’s private suite.

A ‘little lunch thing’ is of _course_ not as innocent as it seems. Hours later, when they’re all given time to rest before the evening’s continued fights, plied by alcohol and exhaustion, Loki muse, with frustration, on the fact that Thor might be right. He has no intention of giving the spirit of his brother any satisfaction by telling him but, as he lays dizzy and sticky, he thinks Thor might be a little right that he is going to let this place consume him.

It only makes him more determined to play out his scheme, though over the next days sometimes it becomes difficult to remember what exactly that scheme was supposed to be.

The days pass in a haze of drinks, sex, fighting with a ghost, and, in the rare moments his head is clear enough, plotting. He keeps at his social machinations, toppling a couple particularly bothersome cliques of insiders and gathering more information about the inner workings of Sakaar. By the end of his first week on this planet, he had secretly memorized the access codes to half the locked doors in the tower, drank and consumed whatever the Grandmaster pressed on him, and lost count of the number of sexual partners he’d coupled with, most at the Grandmaster’s behest.

Thor’s ghost comes and goes. Loki both loathes when the ghost appears, and craves it. The more Thor appears, the more he thinks he was just what Loki needed to survive Sakaar. He knows it's unhealthy, like getting addicted to a drug. But it helps and Loki can't help but cling to it.

There’s something _off_ about Thor. It makes sense, in a way. He is a ghost after all. But there is something strange, frightening about him. A jagged edge, a wildness that has never been Thor’s way. Sometimes he grins in a way that just looks wrong on Thor. The kind of smile that wouldn’t look out of place in a mirror, but looks distorted on his brother’s features. It frightens Loki.

“Don’t you think it’s time to move on?” Loki asks one night.

Thor smiles that feral grin and touches Loki’s hand. His touch feels so cold. It’s creeping, like his icy grip is sinking into Loki’s skin. “Where would I go?” He asks.

“Off to Valhalla?”

“No, little brother. Not yet.”

Loki has more nightmares. Ones he wakes from already screaming into the darkness, clawing at his own chest and throat. He is no stranger to these dreams, though he can never quite remember their substance. He’d have them night after night, first in his cell, then in his parent’s bedroom while masquerading as his father. And now, of course, here, in his bedroom on Sakaar.

Sometimes there are figures, lurking in the shadows of his vision. These he knows for hallucinations and he shuts his eyes tight and fights to control his breathing until they’re gone. The worst is when the massive, hulking shadow stands over his bed. Thanos, come to collect his due. But even he, like all the others, disappears in time, leaving Loki in the lonely darkness.

He nearly cries in relief when the creeping figures in the shadows are replaced by Thor. Curled on his side, he feels Thor's presence sitting on the edge of his bed, not quite substantial enough to make the mattress dip. He feels the whisper of Thor's hand in his hair. Thor's ghost stays until he has calmed down enough to fall back asleep.

The dreams get worse, the longer he is on Sakaar. He doesn’t want to remember them, he wishes they stayed in the murky realm of nightmare. But he gets flashes now, little details that he tries desperately to put from his mind.

He gets jumpier. He does things, strange little things that he doesn’t understand. Once after a particularly strenuous evening with the Grandmaster, he wakes to find himself under the bed, curled into a tight ball, with no memory of crawling under there. He nearly faints during one of the arena fights, the new competitor looking a little too akin to someone from his past.

The Grandmaster finally notices, but he doesn’t press Loki for details. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, darling,” he says. “Here on Sakaar, we have ways of wiping it all away.” The pill is on his lips before Loki can say anything. He knows better than to refuse.

True to the Grandmaster’s word, the drug wipes everything away. All emotion, all pain, all will, all memory. He is utterly numb, limp and pliable for the rest of the evening. The Grandmaster, at least, seems to have a good time.

It takes a whole night for the drug to wear off. When he returns to his suite, he sits and stares at the wall, completely unable to think to do anything else.

Thor doesn’t appear.

The Grandmaster has many varied tastes. There is no refusing the Grandmaster. So there are many nights where he says, “Darling, I have an idea…” and Loki has no choice in the matter. He _could_ say no, but the Grandmaster would only laugh and make clear that he would be doing it whether he wanted to or not, so why not just skip over that part? It’s all easier if he just agrees. _Spare himself the pain._

He catches himself thinking that a few times and has to stop to clear his head. He has never been truly hurt on Sakaar, never tortured. Some of the Grandmaster’s proclivities, yes, skim the edge of tolerance, but he has never been systematically tortured into submission. The boundary between memories and the present grows thinner the more he imbibes. He tries to sober himself up, after catching himself thinking things that belong to another time, but the thing about Sakaar is that no one is ever really sober. The drinks are always flowing and they are unavoidable.

Loki thought he had quite a bit of sexual experience. He had never been a prude, he’d always been down for a bit of _experimentation_. Quickly on Sakaar he finds that in comparison, oh, he had indeed been a prude.

It’s not all misery. It’s not all strategy. Often it is truly pleasurable, when he can set aside thoughts and emotions and simply rely on physical sensations.

Sometimes, Loki imagines throwing this in Thor’s face. When he’s on his back, dizzy with pleasure, he writes monologues about the way the Grandmaster makes him feel like he could float away. But Thor’s ghost doesn’t always appear and the satisfaction dissipates when he doesn’t get to face the specter. And besides, he knows that Thor will have seen the truth of it all.

But for every night he is swept up in the sweetest ecstasy, there are several more he feels himself being carried by a tide he cannot control. He tries to, he tries to keep the situation, tries to keep up his scheming but the Grandmaster looks at him, the Grandmaster grabs his arm, the Grandmaster says, ‘here, have another drink’ and he can’t stop what happens next.

He doesn’t say anything to Thor, though he knows the ghost watches. Though he knows Thor sees just how the Grandmaster takes him apart.

He doesn’t want to give Thor the satisfaction of being right, even in death.

"Why haven't you moved on?"

"You keep asking that, brother."

"Well, you keep dodging the question. I never took you as one to become a phantom, to linger on as a shade. I'd always figured you'd be pounding down the doors of Valhalla as soon as your spirit had vacated your corpse."

Thor has nothing to say to that.

Thor’s ghost is there often now. Like an ever-present shadow in the corner of the room. So many times, when Loki has to _perform_ for the Grandmaster while the specter of his brother lurks in the corner. He wants to scream, to yell at Thor to get out, but he refrains. There’s a chance the Grandmaster would find his madness an endearing quirk but he doesn’t want to risk finding out.

The ghost offers no other evidence of what happened to him after Loki was thrown from the bifrost. Loki asks, night after night, but Thor doesn’t budge, leaving him to imagine the fate on his own. What he conjures up is no doubt worse than what truly occurred. His imagination supplies worse and worse scenarios every day.

Life on Sakaar continues with no one but Loki any the wiser that there is an unaccounted for spectral guest in the tower.

_

One night, the Grandmaster brings out a new concoction.

“Just something that R&D cooked up,” he says, taking a sip himself. The violet liquid is poured into hundreds of tall flutes, lined up on the bar, covering the entire surface. “Go ahead!” The Grandmaster beckons them in. “Try it. It’s good!”

It doesn’t taste terrible. It tastes like berries, with a bit of a bite. It’s not as sickly sweet as most of the alcohol available on this planet, but it is _vastly_ more intoxicating. In no more than half an hour, the party has descended into sloppy chaos.

Loki is not spared from the intoxicating effects. He could - _should_ \- use a touch of his magic to cut the effects, keep his head mostly clear. But by the time he realizes how powerful the concoction is, it’s too late. His magic is slippery and uncontrolled. He feels that if he tried to use a small amount, it would all come pouring out of him, exploding from his control. He’d likely shatter every glass in the room. He doesn’t want to imagine what would happen if he did something like that. He’s seen hints of punishments for missteps and knows he must avoid it at all cost.

This is one of those nights where he can do nothing else but allow himself to be carried by the flow. He goes to the bar, nearly stumbling already, and picks up another glass.

In the mirror behind the bar he sees Thor’s ghost, floating amongst the crowd. Their eyes meet for a brief second before the ghost vanishes and Loki drains his second glass of the purple liquid. It burns on his tongue.

Reality slips away, leaving only wavering shadows and pulsing music in his ears. The Grandmaster makes the rounds, always making sure that his guests glasses are full. It’s under the guise of hospitality, but Loki thinks he likes seeing this sort of chaos, he likes to watch people unraveling in his presence just as he likes to watch the fighters destroy each other in the arena. It’s all a game, it’s all a show to him. He likes to keep people under his power, likes to watch them squirm to do his bidding, to tear each other apart. The sex is surely nice, but it is not the Grandmaster’s true prize. The prize is watching the crowd of people writhe against each other in their desperation to gain his favor. The real prize is possessing a collection of slaves, bound by sex and addiction and having no where else to turn, all waiting for their turn to rise to the top, or waiting for their precipitous fall into ruin.

“What are you waiting for?” The Grandmaster asks, catching him off guard. Loki pales. He can’t keep track of what he’s thought and what he’s said out loud.

“I-”

“You’ve been standing here staring at the wall for a couple minutes there, Lo. And with an empty glass! What are you waiting for?”

“I’m waiting…waiting for…” His tongue feels thick and clumsy. He scrambles to come up with anything, but his mind is blank.

“Waiting for what, sweetheart?” The Grandmaster’s hands are firm around his waist.

He’s waiting for Thor. Waiting for death to take him. Waiting for an opportunity. A knife in his hand. A knife in his back.

“What do you want of me?” Loki finally asks. He had said the same words long ago, words that eventually brought him to Midgard to rend a hole in the sky. Once, a lifetime ago, he had been covered in blood, on his knees on hard stone. He had looked up into Thanos’s face and with a broken voice asked, _what do you want of me?_

The Grandmaster smiles. “Have another drink.”

By night’s end, Loki cannot keep coherent thoughts in his brain. They slip from his mind as soon as he has them. There’s a black hole in his memories - several black holes, patches that are lost to time. He can barely keep his feet as he stumbles through the halls back to his room. The party is still going, but the Grandmaster was distracted by someone else, freeing Loki early.

Loki just couldn’t stand it anymore. If he stayed one more moment in the pounding music, in the dark room that smelled like alcohol and sweet perfume and sex, he was going to vomit. That threat has not entirely passed. Even in the cleaner air of the hallway, his stomach flips and he has to swallow down nausea several times.

Loki lets himself into his rooms, shutting the door and leaning heavily against us. The rooms are quiet. His ears ring in the silence of it. He manages to get his cape off, and his boots. He tries and fails to get his fingers to be dexterous enough to undo the clasps of his tunic before he gives up and starts to stagger towards the bedroom.

He falls before he makes it to the bed. He collapses onto his hands and knees as the room spins and spins around him. His stomach churns, saliva flooding his mouth. He knows that it is in vain, but still he tries to swallow it down.

“Rough night, brother?” The ghost makes his entrance.

Loki moans. “Please. Leave me alone.”

“That’s not really the point of haunting you.” Thor’s form shimmers into view, sitting on the bench at the end of his bed and leaning over his knees. “Leaving you alone, that is.”

“Then what is your point?” Loki snaps.

Thor just smiles down at him. “In due time.”

Loki laughs. “You keep saying that. You’re never going to actually tell me, are you? I’m beginning to think…you have no purpose…” Loki has to drop his head as the nausea rises. When it again passes, retreating to an ominous rumble, like a dormant volcano, he tries to stand. He cannot. “You cannot be useful and fetch me a glass of water?”

Thor laughs. “With all your arcane knowledge, you have forgotten that a specter has no corporeal form?”

“Oh.” Loki settles down. “Of course.” It’s distracting, the nausea. And now a throbbing starts up in his skull. His vision keeps blurring, darkening. He laughs, a small hysterical giggle. “I keep forgetting you’re a ghost. I don’t know how. This is the most you’ve spoken to me in years. If you were alive, I doubt you’d be this chatty. You’d be too busy…beating me to death with your hammer. Oh, I forgot. That’s gone too.”

“If you keep drinking like this, you’ll forget a lot of things.”

Loki laughs again. “That is the point. Isn’t it? Forgetting. Just for a little while. Forgetting it all.”

“Like forgetting how he touches you?”

The smile falls of Loki’s face. “This again. Look, you hardly have the right to judge me.”

“I am not judging you.”

“You _are_. You could have taken your place in Valhalla, but you remain here, to mock me. To pity me. To watch the spectacle, the morality play of the snake becoming the whore, getting his due.”

“That’s not-”

“Then what is it, Thor? Why do you insist on haunting me?”

“Why do you insist on thinking so lowly of yourself?” Thor lets the question hang for a moment. “And perhaps I haunt you because you have long haunted me. Vengeance, brother. I thought you understood the concept.”

“You were the one always going on about vengeance. You and your ‘Avengers’. That was your whole _point_.” Loki manages to rise long enough to stumble over to the wall, to lean his back up against it. He lets his head drop back. “They don’t know you’re dead. Do you think they’ll look for you? When it all falls apart, they’ll look for you and you’ll never appear, and they will believe that you have betrayed them, abandoned them-” _And perhaps they will understand…perhaps they will feel, for one second, what I did, alone in the dark, screaming your name-_

“You’re drunk,” Thor says.

“Oh, stop stating the obvious.”

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“Can’t I?” His voice is breathless now.

“Loki. Enough.” Thor’s ghost looms over him. “Your fantasy is just that, a fantasy. Do you realize what you’re actually doing to yourself? What path you have let yourself be driven onto?”

Loki feels like he’s being scolded. “I’m making my way here. Getting accustomed, so that one day I might-”

“You will never kill him, brother. You must sense that, even now.” Thor looks grave. “You know to what fate you have doomed yourself. He will keep plying you with drinks and drugs, he will keep fucking you, until your shine as a new toy has worn off. Then, at best, you will remain as a lower level courtier, having to constantly scheme and fuck your way through survival, never to rise to the level of power you think you deserve. More likely, you will be worn down, unable to stand it any more and you’ll take your own life.”

“I’m sure it will only fail again,” he shoots back bitterly. _Why don’t you? What’s the point of putting it off?_ The thought invades his mind, then flees almost as quickly. It’s just a small, passing urge that Loki can’t grasp the logic of a moment later.

“Or he’ll kill you. You’ll misstep. You cannot be perfectly careful every moment for the rest of your life. One day you will err, you will do something he doesn’t like, and he’ll kill you.”

“Just like everyone else!” Loki cries.

“Can you live like this for the rest of your days?” Thor bellows back at him, continuing to ignore Loki’s words.

“What choice do I have Thor? I’ve told you before,” Loki says. His eyes sting. “Any other path leads to death. All paths lead to death. And a short one. No, there’s no lingering until I die a withered old man, not for me. All roads lead to a painful, rapid death sentence.” His next breath stutters. “This one just happens to be the least painful.”

“You’re wrong,” Thor says. “You’re not thinking clearly.”

“What do you know? You’re dead.” Loki wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve. “And besides, you’ve never had to make these choices. To give up your body, to give up your freedom for survival. You’ve always been…always been so sure of yourself. So powerful that you’ve never know what it was like-”

“That’s a lie and you know it.”

“Maybe so. Maybe on your darkest days you have felt a _minuscule_ degree of the objectification I have. But you have no idea, where I’ve gone, what I’ve seen and done. The choices I made. So I made this one. Between a sordid life walking the knife’s edge between power and servitude on this sinking planet, or meeting agony in the darkness, I would choose Sakaar any day.”

“Loki. Those are not the only two paths. There’s still hope.”

“There’s decidedly not, Thor. Maybe if you hadn’t been so foolish as to get yourself killed, there would have. Maybe together we would have figured something out. Maybe. But you’re gone. You’re wrong about hope.” He clears his throat. “I’m going to stay the course. I’m going to keep winning my way into the Grandmaster’s good graces. I’ve got a new idea, to start gathering allies in the Grandmaster’s inner circle. So that I’ll have supporters when I stage my coup. And you’ll stay dead. Because that’s what you are. Dead, and no help to me anymore.” It all sounds so hollow. He trails off.

Thor looks disappointed. “You should sleep.”

Loki blinks up at him. “I don’t want to sleep. I don’t. There’s a part of me that wishes I could stay awake forever, because I do not have to be tormented by the darkness my mind can conjure up. And I can remain vigilant. Once I made it five days. When I was reigning as king-”

“-when you were masquerading as Father.”

“Yes.” Loki’s breath catches. “I made it five days, without sleeping a moment. I didn’t know if Father was going to suddenly appear to lock me back up, if you were going to show up and see through me or…” It chokes in his throat. “If Th-…if someone were to…” Loki swallows. “Five days. Wandering the halls of the palace. Servants were whispering about me. By the end my skin was crawling, like bugs were crawling underneath. I felt as though my eyes would melt from my skull. There were shapes in the shadows.”

“Sleep, brother.” Thor is beginning to fade. “You should sleep. Perhaps in the morning you will have greater clarity about the ruin you are bringing upon yourself.”

“I don’t want to,” Loki says, like a petulant child.

_Perhaps if he asks like he were a child, refusing to go to bed, Thor will stay, will humor him and coax him gently to bed like he used to when Loki indeed was a child stubbornly refusing to go willingly to sleep._

But Thor is almost entirely translucent now. “Wait-” Loki cries. “Don’t leave.” He knows it’s pathetic, the way he begs the ghost of his brother to stay with him.

“Go to sleep.” And Thor is gone, vanished to wherever he goes when he leaves Loki.

He sits for a moment in the ringing silence, swaying slightly as the room spins. He manages to drag himself over to a bin just in time to vomit up brightly colored alcohol. His throat and gut are aching when he is finished, but his head is clearer. He can get to his feet, though his gait is unsteady and barely enough for him to stumble to the bed. Feeling like death, he curls on his side and manages to fall asleep.

_

He is woken in the morning by the Grandmaster, flopping onto his bed.

“Good morning, sunshine!” The Grandmaster sounds far too cheerful. Loki can’t even respond, can only groan and hope he will not embarrass himself by vomiting. “My new cocktail was, uh, a huge hit last night. Here.” He hands over a glass of juice. “This should clear things up.”

Loki cannot help but accept. He knocks back the contents of the glass, hoping if he drinks it fast enough he’ll trick his body into keeping it down. He does, and barely a minute later the sickness starts to fade.

“Our research team is just top-notch. Top-notch. This is best feature. They’ve created an actual antidote hangover. Just of this concoction specifically, so don’t expect it every time. It’s also _wildly_ expensive. But I thought you could use a pick-me-up after last night.”

“What do you mean?” Loki doesn’t remember much from the night before. He remembers…waiting for something, and a look of disappointment on Thor’s face. “I’m sorry if I said-”

“No, no,” The Grandmaster pats his knee, still covered by the sheets. “Nothing you said, don’t worry about that at all. Well. It’s just. I didn’t even really want to bring it up at all.” Loki stomach sinks. “You just…had the most dour expression the whole night. Frankly, it’s not something we want to see at a party, and it’s really not fun, when I’ve put in all this _work_ -”

“I apologize,” he says quickly. “I’m so sorry, I had no intention…of making you think I was ungrateful.”

“Well, what was it then?”

Loki pauses, unsure of whether to outright lie or try to spin something closer to the truth. He decides on the latter when his mind refuses to come up with anything better. “I was just reminded, last night, of something from my past. Of…of my family.”

“Your parents?” The Grandmaster lays next to him, propping his head on his arm. “They’re dead aren’t they?”

“Yes. And I perhaps…overstated how long ago they passed.” How long had it been, since he watched Odin turn to light? He’s entirely lost track. He still hasn’t quite processed it. “I didn’t want to…be a burden, or to bring down the mood because of…my mourning…”

The Grandmaster does give him a look of pity then, but it is fleeting. Loki half expects him to ask how they died, or make him tell him about them, and he’s filled with horror at the thought of having to put the effort into blending lies and the truth about the family he had been sundered from so long ago, but then the Grandmaster sighs.

“You don’t need to worry about that anymore.” The Grandmaster says, wiping them all away. “Forget about them.” Like wiping a thousand years of history away could be so simple. Perhaps it was, for creatures like the Grandmaster. He reaches over and wraps a hand possessively around Loki’s wrist. “You’ve got us.”

It’s exactly what he wanted. A sense of security in his position on Sakaar. But the Grandmaster’s hand feels like a manacle. He can hear a door slamming shut.

He manages a wan smile. It takes effort. “Of course.”

“No more grief. No more being sad.” The Grandmaster grins widely. “This is Sakaar. None of that icky business here.” He waves a hand like he's banishing cobwebs.

Loki can’t quite shake the sinking feeling of grief, but manages to put on enough of a performance that the Grandmaster doesn’t address it. Or perhaps he truly just doesn’t care.

Thor doesn’t appear that night. Loki lays in the darkness, flat on his back, and listens for any sign of the ghost. Nothing.

His chest aches. He wishes, with his own self, that his mother would appear to him. She never has. Unlike Thor, she’s gone to her rest. _You’re not my mother._ He’ll never get the chance to say anything else to her. He’s never gotten the chance to apologize.

He lays in the darkness, hating himself, until light strikes the windows as a new day dawns on Sakaar.

Then Loki rises to face whatever vices this planet has in store for him today.

_

Since Loki has been on Sakaar, there have been hints here and there of punishments for transgressions. The Grandmaster’s face would flash with momentary rage, followed by the most terrifying coldness. Sometimes guests at parties are transformed into servants the following day, looking shocked and gaunt, with a disk implanted on their neck. Sometimes they just vanish and there are nothing but whispers about their fate. Loki hears some rumors of more _corporal_ punishments taken place in some hidden pockets of the tower but his mind can not bear dwelling on that for long.

He’s even felt himself edging closer to the limit of the Grandmaster’s tolerance. He’s had to test it out, and always manages to walk back whatever wrong he’s done, but he’s seen the way the Grandmaster retaliates. The way he in turn pushes past Loki’s own boundaries. Loki doesn’t dwell on the memories of those experiences. He learns the lesson, waits until the aches and the sense of violation fades, and moves on.

The clearest demonstration of the ultimate punishment comes at an otherwise unremarkable party.

“Grandmaster,” Topaz says. She’s holding her long staff. “We’ve caught him.”

This unfortunate creature had the audacity of trying to escape. The rumor that whispers around the room is that he had fallen in love with one of their food suppliers, the captain of a ship that brought fresh goods from off-world. It’s terribly romantic. Loki’s not sure he believes it, though several people around him whisper that they saw the captain chained up and gagged down in the fighters’ pits, waiting to be fed as chum in the next phase of the tournament.

The escapee is strapped to a chair, floated in as the throngs of guests part to make room.

In full view of everyone at the party, the Grandmaster shows his displeasure.

It’s his pitiful begging that does it. Loki would perhaps, in a better state of mind, find it disgustingly weak. A man should go to his death with honor. He remembers the rare execution on Asgard. It was reserved for the worst of crimes. Traitors, unrepentant murderers. They had all faced the headsman with their spines straight and their faces set in a grim expression.

_As warriors,_ Odin had told him. _They face death as warriors, even if their lives have been the most dishonorable. It is all they have left. One day, it is all I will have left, all you will have. To face death with dignity._

But there is no way _this_ pitiful display could be a dignified death. The Grandmaster strips dignity away from everything, he’s good at that. Makes everything in his sight base and low. Loki thinks of what Thor had yelled at him. About the death he would face here. He grips his glass so hard he’s afraid he’s going to shatter it.

The man tries to make his own case, yells incoherently about circumstances and misunderstandings but the Grandmaster is unmoved.

“But I just don’t know _how_ this could be a misunderstanding. You were clearly seen boarding the ship. And making off with several cases of stolen goods.” The Grandmaster clicks his tongue. “Running away, _and_ stolen goods? Now that’s just…unacceptable.”

Loki casts a surreptitious glance around the room. About a third are averting their gazes. A third are trying to sink into the shadows. And the last third are watching with open delight. Always a joy to see a rival fall. Loki just feels a cool sort of horror as he turns back to the scene.

“You know, I didn’t wake up today expecting a public execution, but sometimes life just surprises you in the most lovely ways.” He holds out his hand and Topaz hands him her staff.

Strapped to the chair, the man cries, begs for his life. Snot drips down his nose. He wets himself.

“It’s just so,” The Grandmaster sighs. “What’s the word? Disappointing.”

It’s undignified. Not a warrior’s death by any means, it’s the death of someone who has spent years being used, and then finally discarded. Loki finds himself wondering how many of the people in this room will one day meet the same fate.

It happens quickly. The Grandmaster raises the stick and aims - the poor man screams out once and then is a pile of ooze on the floor. The liquefied corpse smells foul.

The room is silent. The Grandmaster looks at the puddle with disgust. “Clean that up,” he snaps. He hands the staff back to Topaz. “Well? What’s with all the dour faces? It’s a party, isn’t it?”

The stench is still in the air as the music starts up again. As the lights lower.

Loki waits, biding his time, and when the Grandmaster is in a good mood once again he puts on his most dazzling smile and sidles up to him. He makes sure to say nothing of what happened earlier, but to act pleasantly tipsy and foolishly flirtatious.

After, when he is alone in his rooms, clothes still askew from where he hastily tugged them back on, he drops to his knees and screams into his hands.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Thor says, floating beside him. “One day that will be you, don’t you _understand?”_

“It won’t,” he says but knows Thor is right.

“You need to get out of here, Loki. Whatever plans you think you have of overthrowing him, brother, they must stop _now_ , you must save yourself.”

“I _can’t!”_ Loki screams back. “Where do you propose I go, hm? Even if I could find my way out of here, I could never go _home_. I don’t _have_ one anymore. Asgard is long closed to me, if it’s even still standing after Hela’s had her way with it. I would probably be executed the moment I step back on Jotunheim, I’m a traitor that killed their king after all. Midgard? Ha. They’ll destroy me without a thought and they’d be right to. Anywhere else in the galaxy, _someone_ will find me. If it’s not the Grandmaster, chasing his escaped _slave-“_ He grits the word out through clenched teeth. “It will be Thanos, seeking vengeance for how I have failed him. Or Hela, looking to eliminate the last threat to her rule. I die either way. _Any_ way. I should have died long ago, and I don’t know why I am still living!” He cuts off, panting.

“Loki,” Thor’s ghost says. “Please.”

“Please _what?_ Please what, Thor? What do you want from me? Why will you not let me rest?” There are tears on his cheeks now, snot dripping from his nose. He must look like a toddler, a foolish, screaming toddler having a tantrum. He is a child though, in this moment. He wants to be held. He wants his mother, he even wants Thor. Just someone to hold him. But though Thor is here, he has no corporeal form, and can only shout at him.

“Loki, you cannot let this madman-”

“I can’t do this!” Loki screams back. “I am not strong enough to do this! I will break, I will go mad, _more_ mad, if you keep _doing this_ to me. Go away, Thor, _go away!”_ He’s crying harder now. He curses himself.

“I will not go away. Not until you-”

Loki tries to go to his bedroom, but Thor’s ghost suddenly shifts in front of him and he stops short.

“You’re going to die.”

“Is that a prophecy, a warning, or a threat?” Loki spits.

“You are going to die, Loki, you need to get off this planet”

“Thor-”

“You need _to go.”_

“Will you _stop_ screaming this at me? I can do nothing else, I am trapped here!” A sob builds in his chest. “I can do nothing. _You_ can do nothing. Why do you insist on…on remaining here shouting all my own fears back at me? Do you not think I _know_ all of this? Do you not think that in the darkness, when he’s _fucking_ me, I do not _know_ how close I am to ruin? Do you think I am not struggling?”

“I know that you are. You’re suffering.” Thor extends a hand. It goes right through Loki’s shoulder. Loki feels nothing, not even a whisper. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“You can’t protect me.” Loki’s breath hitches. “Because you’re dead. We can’t…mend what we had. Because you’re dead. All you can do is shout at me, all we can do is fight, because you’re _fucking_ dead. You’re useless.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. You’re nothing, now, Thor. You’re a shade. You’re a shadow. You can only cause me more pain. Go away. I am done with you.”

Thor’s expression grows stormy. “You must listen!” Thor’s voice echoes off the walls. It is so loud it hurts.

_“GO AWAY!”_ Loki screams. “Stop this _haunting_. Find your paradise, find the halls where you can feast and drink with your fallen comrades, and…and fight the day away. Leave me to this cursed existence. But please. Go away.” He heaves in a breath. Every cell of his body _hurts_. He thought at first, that he could handle this. He can admit that he had been clinging to Thor’s ghost to get some kind of closure. Hoping that the ghost could soothe him somehow. Keep him company through these trials on Sakaar. But he has forgotten the core principle of a haunting; it can only ever bring more torment.

Heart heavy, he lets the tears flow and turns away from Thor’s ghastly face. “Go, Thor. I can’t live with your death, and I cannot live with your ghost.”

“Loki-”

Loki covers his ears and screams. He screams to drown out Thor’s voice until it is gone and he is alone again.

When he wakes in the morning, it is with new resolve. Resolve to banish the ghost.

There are a few spells that might work, but any major display of magic would likely bring the Grandmaster’s attention, and not in a way that he wants. So he has to do this without magic. The long way. His continued engagement with Thor’s ghost probably fueled its presence. Thor certainly seemed to get clearer over time, more solid. He had grown from a flickering shadow to a fully fledged apparition. So it follows that if Loki no longer gives Thor any attention, it will gradually drain his power. Thor will have to work harder to sustain his haunting, and eventually he will realize that it’s not worth the energy. Loki can’t give the ghost any more fuel. He cannot speak to Thor, he can’t even look at him. Like kicking a nasty habit, Loki must ignore the ghost as much as he can, until Thor gets the message and fucks off back to Valhalla.

This is all easier said that done.

He nearly cracks the first time. But he holds his ground and ignores everything that Thor says, all the pleading and begging for Loki to speak to him. Once the ghost is gone, he feels such hatred for himself that it makes him want to tear into his own flesh, open his veins onto the Grandmaster’s disgusting carpets. But he resists the urge and goes to bed early, lying in the darkness and listening to the silence.

As soon as Thor appears now, Loki turns away. In his room, he puts his hands over his ears and squeezes his eyes shut until he is sure the apparition is gone.

Thor tries his hardest to stay. At first there are the pleas to listen. Then Thor tries to catch him by surprise, appearing out of the shadows when Loki least expects it. Then he says things, awful, painful, private things, specially designed to strike at Loki’s heart.

Loki does not ever acknowledge Thor’s presence. He waits for the ghost to be gone to collapse to his knees and scream in fury.

Thor’s appearances slow over the course of a week. Two days pass, then three, four, and Loki begins to accept that it’s working.

He feels empty. Hollow. Like his insides have been scooped out and replaced with empty air. It hurts, not quite as badly as the tearing pain that came from the sequence of sundering events that lead to his fall into the Void, or the horror of realization when he understood that no one would come for him, even when he screamed for them. No, it’s not quite that painful. But it aches. It feels like a wound stitching itself back up, but one that will leave a jagged and debilitating scar. (He would certainly know about those.) It’s the pain of a door closing. Of leaving behind and being left.

Thor drifts away. He no longer frightens him. He no longer begs for Loki to listen. He just watches, waits, a quiet spirit in the corner of the room. He floats in the periphery of Loki’s vision, saying nothing. Loki continues to ignore him.

Loki commits to the role he’s cast himself as, here on Sakaar. This is his life now, after all. He slides into it as easily as he had slid into the glamour of his father. As easily as a thousand years ago, when he had changed his shape for the first time and slid into the skin of an Asgardian prince.

Scrapper-142 notices something’s off one night when they’re both out of their minds with drink at one of the Grandmaster’s soirees.

“You seem…stressed. Wound up. More than usual.”

“I’m fine.”

She takes another drink, looks at him with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t take you for one of _those_. Not after the way you stormed in here. Made me take you right to the Grandmaster.”

“Yes, before you sold me?

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You’re not joking about it anymore,” she says. “That wasn’t a jab at me, that was real. I thought you’d be one to play the long game. Not wear thin so fast. See, once they start really thinking about what they really are…that’s the end. If they can’t wear the pretty disguises anymore, they start to crack.”

“I’m not cracking.” Loki says. He’s not sure he’s solid enough to crack. He feels liquid tonight, like he’s melting into the bar. There’s not enough left in him to crack. “I have always known what I am here.”

“Have you?”

“It is…a momentary setback. I will be myself again…in a few days. Just…a phase I must pass through. And then I’ll be fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Will you really be fine?” she says and for a moment the quality of her words are different. He squints at her.

The All-speak filters almost all languages into words he can understand. To his ears, they all sound just like the Asgardian language that is his true native tongue, but it always sounds _different_ to hear it truly spoken, when someone is using the language for real, and it is not simply translated through the All-speak. And for a moment, when she speaks, it sounds like she’s _actually_ said it in Asgardian. Then she says it again and it sounds like Thor’s voice in his head. A sigh, and she says it a third time, this time addressing her drink. “Will you really be fine?”

Loki shuts his eyes against the spinning of the room. The languages being spoken around him slip in and out of the All-speak. One second he can understand everyone, each pocket of whispered conversation in the bar. And then he can understand none of them, their words turning into an incomprehensible cacophony in his ears.

The ghost turns staticky. It flickers in and out of his vision with distorted edges, until Loki’s left with a splitting headache that leaves him bed bound for the better part of an afternoon. The Grandmaster comes to ‘take care of him’ with cool cloths and sweet fruits, but that quickly leads to the Grandmaster stripping him down and fucking him, while Loki tries not to vomit. He feels like his head will explode, presses a hand over his eyes like that will make them stop throbbing, while the Grandmaster uses his body, bites down on his shoulder.

Slowly, the ghost disappears. Thor leaves him alone. The last time he sees him is as a brief shadow, in the reflection of the window as they watch the fights.

And then he’s gone.

Loki’s kicked the habit. He’s suffered through the withdrawal and made it to the other side. The ghost is gone. Thor’s soul has been laid to rest, off to Valhalla hopefully. He will be with their parents. Loki feels the most pain when he thinks of that, a deep longing mixed with visceral rejection. He pictures them all together, and feels himself so, so apart. A family again, in an afterlife he will never see. A family he had never belonged to in the first place.

He throws himself back into drink when he thinks of that. Into sex. Into whatever horrible decadent things Sakaar can offer him to make him forget his eternal loneliness.

“I love it when you get like this,” the Grandmaster purrs. “So much fun.”

He’s through to the other side. He can start to settle into his life here, one day to take it over, once he can overthrow the Grandmaster. When he closes his eyes, he can see the blade sink into his back. In his hands, he can almost feel the steady pressure of the hilt in his palm, the way warm blood would flow over his skin.

All in due time.

_

Just when he thinks it’s truly over, when he’s mingling with the other guests at the party all thoughts of his life before stubbornly locked away in a dark corner of his mind, he hears a voice.

“Loki… _Loki!”_

For a moment, he laments the return of the ghost. All his hard work, for naught.

But when he turns, Thor is bound in a chair, others are looking at him, giving him strange glances, whispering about him, Thor is corporeal, he is real, Thor is angry, brow tightly furrowed, his scowling mouth opens to say Loki’s name again-

Thor is _not a ghost._

_Oh._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The key line here really was: "He knows magic and specters and yes, even if his mind has not been entirely whole in the last few years, he can certainly tell the difference between haunting and hallucination" because oh no, sweetie, it turns out you really can't right now. 
> 
> So yeah, Thor was not a ghost! Thor was an incredibly vivid hallucination. This fic could _technically_ be considered canon compliant, though it is operating under the darkest possible interpretation of Sakaar and Loki's experiences there. I kind of interpreted this as Thor being an externalization of Loki's deepest fears and hurts, what he really wants to say about Sakaar, which is why they argue so much about it. He's holding it at such a distance, refusing to really acknowledge that the Grandmaster is raping him, that he's suffering immensely, that he knows he's in over his head and his scheme to kill the Grandmaster will probably only lead to him being killed...but he can't really process that and he puts his mind even more through the wringer by knocking back any substance put before him without really being careful about the drugs and alcohol he's consuming and how they're mixing...until his mind produces Thor's hallucination/ghost as a repository for all his Sakaar trauma. And then he has to get rid of it as a symbol of further repressing that trauma in favor of surviving Sakaar.
> 
> That was all _totally_ intentional and not something I just now realized while writing this note.
> 
> This really did live up to the 'all hurt no comfort' tag. Sorry folks. As per usual, I have also made myself sad and do have a little inkling of like, 'hey maybe I should write the comfort half' but I'm really trying to pare down the WIP list before I start on anything new. But just know that I too, am like, 'hey OP, where's the comfort?' 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Feel free to [follow me on tumblr](https://bereft-of-frogs.tumblr.com/) for more nonsense. ;-) Comments/Kudos/Shares/Frogs always appreciated! <3


End file.
